The Shocking Abuses Of Children Held Within Trump’s Detention Centers

Children being held in US custody have been involuntarily drugged and have suffered from various other heinous abuses. Court filings this week claim the children were given antipsychotic drugs which left them unable to walk, stay awake, or maintain their mental and physical health.

The class action lawsuit not only focuses on children taken during Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy but claims the abuses go back years. It also says these type of abuses are occurring for migrant children arriving from all over the world.

At the heart of the case are government contractors at Texas’ Shiloh Treatment Center and Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center.

“Whenever they used to restrain me and put me in the chair, they would handcuff me,” a Honduran immigrant, told Time. “They also put a bag over your head.”

The drugs prescribed to the children were also not approved by the FDA for use by children, the lawsuit claims.

Among the alleged drugs administered were olanzapine and quetiapine, antipsychotics used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression.

Gizmodo also reports that other drugs were administered, including “prazosin, commonly used to treat high blood pressure, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety, and benzodiazepines like clonazepam, a tranquilizer used to manage seizures and panic attacks.”

The court filing says that children were not told why the drugs were being administered and were forced to take the medication by way of physical force.

The lawsuit also claims that children were only allowed one-hour of outdoor playtime each day and were often shackled with handcuffs for long periods of time — essentially treated like adult inmates at a correctional facility.

The claims of the lawsuit are not unfounded, RevealNews reported last week that The Center for Investigative Reporting found “serious allegations of mistreating children” for 71 centers which receive more than $3 billion a year in government funding.

Via Reveal:

President Donald Trump’s zero tolerance policy is creating a zombie army of children forcibly injected with medications that make them dizzy, listless, obese and even incapacitated, according to legal filings that show immigrant children in U.S. custody subdued with powerful psychiatric drugs.

Childhood abuses don’t end with forced drug use and handcuffs. The American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement on Monday in which they said Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy “amounts to child abuse. During an appearance on CNN, Dr. Colleen Kraft spoke to the emotional abuse children are suffering.

“I can’t describe to you the room I was in with the toddlers,” Kraft says. “Normally toddlers are rambunctious and running around. We had one child just screaming and crying, and the others were really silent. And this is not normal activity or brain development with these children.”

The President on Wednesday signed an Executive Order that will keep from separating any further children from their parents. Sadly, many children arrive in the United States unaccompanied and Trump’s actions will do nothing to protect those children from these type of abuses.